1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to earth working specifically to an earth-engaging tool which is more efficient and robust.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
While the industry has expended much effort to build more effective teeth to use in earth exicovation, they have relied mostly on wedge type teeth. Of the six simple machines, the lever and fulcrum, the windless, the screw, the block and tackle, the inclined plane and the wedge, the wedge is the least efficient because of its friction.
Most of the prior art teeth, wedge earth on the bottom and at the sides. While dragging on the lower leading edge is necessary for cleavage, dragging on the bottom of the tooth, means that additional excavated earth is disturbed or displaced and that extra draft is required. This wedging not only reduces the down pressure needed for nearly every excavation of consolidated earth, but it also creates much additional unwanted abrasive fines and circulates them in the proximity of the supporting structure of an earth working tooth.
These negative effects set up by this wedging including blunting of the front of the teeth, cause unnecessary disturbances in the fluid dynamics of the earth excavated. This requires the expenditure of considerably more energy.
The fact that more fines are generated, also requires more energy to manipulate or crush the fines, more wear and tear, and it increases the cost of the particular excavation operation. There are specialized machines available to reduce earth to fines that are much more efficient than the teeth and their mounting mechanisms. Abrasive fines generated from abrasive earth excavation are channeled through the teeth and the teeth mounting components or supporting structure and thereby cause some serious erosion and reduction in integrity of essential components of the tooth and its structure.
These impediments greatly increase the cost of tooth components. They also cause considerable reduction in work productivity. They increase operating down time and reduce efficiency. They also increase the frequency with which expensive tooth components must be changed and they compound operating expenses.
The Launder et al U.S. Pat. No. 5,782,019 Jul. 21, 1998 shows a contoured tooth with very little sacrificial metal. The teeth are designed to offer less resistance while maintaining a configuration as it wears. But the design of this tooth limits the amount of sacrificial metal mass. This tooth design can require a rather close digging range for the angle of attack. These teeth are also expensive and they too, are designed to wedge through the excavation. Also, in this design there is little protection to the tooth attached implement or lip.
The Emrich et al U.S. Pat. No. 5,666,748 Sep. 16, 1997, is typical of many prior art methods to reduce wear and incorporate small complicated features that are expensive and questionably efficient. They need to be discarded if operated for only a short time with missing pieces. These multiple pieces get more slack as they are being used. This style still does not address adjacent adapter erosion and lip wear as it wedges and channels excavated material past the adapter, part of the implement or the lip on both the upper and underside.
Cornelius U.S. Pat. No. 5,412,885 May 9, 1995 shows a tooth and lip arrangement. Armored about the lip to enhance and protect from abrasion, the bucket tooth, and the adapters, are included in this protection service. It is very expensive and complicated, and if operated with one of its pieces lost or missing, a continued fit could be forfeited and result in expensive repair
This patent provides heavy ground engagement protection to its attached implement or the lip. While this design is for highly abrasive exposure, it still leaves expensive pieces exposed to heavy abrasion.
If it is kept working, it requires high maintenance, it is an expensive and complicated additional system for abrasion protection of a lip that is already built for abrasion.
""Lipxe2x80x94cutting edge of any of certain tools, Webster""s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition.
This expensive lip protection lacks positive overlapping abrasion protection. In effect, a cutting edge is placed and is working over another cutting edge, or one or both jointly are part of the structure. There is a better way to arrange for structure and abrasion protection.
Also this arrangement involves a dual ground engagement. The teeth partially fracture the earth and the lip completes the fracture and cleaves the excavation.
Lip armament is wedged through earthen material with considerable additional energy requirement and very much more abrasion exposure than is necessary.
The labor, material, and down time costs of a harsh abrasive environment of consolidated earth can be devastating and an alternate method of excavation should be used. The teeth fracture a part of the stubborn earth then the lip or the lip armament is required to complete the fracturing and cleave the balanced of the earth in the excavation process.
The above lip protection systems are not simple, not cheap, nor do they have a particularly extended life. Also these protective systems usually do not remain a tight fit to perform their task. There frequently are gaps where tight fitting adapters and the lip are worn, where tight fitting armor pieces were once located.
Pippins U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,495, Aug. 16, 1994, shows further evidence of different methods of abrasion protection of large replaceable sections of bucket teeth. It is a wedge type tooth. It is quite complicated and expensive. And this abrasion protection method offers little protection advantage to the implement or lip.
Robinson of Hensley U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,365 shows several productions of prior art in their teeth and a protector shroud which are detachably mounted on the lip. This patent gives a good description of blunting, page 4, line 6 through 10, gives a good illustration of the potential wear pattern and bluntness of a wedge tooth.
Again we have an example of a complicated, expensive system that is expensive to buy and maintain and more energy is required to operate this wedge type earth engagement.
These systems of lip protection disturb the flow of earth so much that there is an ongoing penalty for the increased loading resistance. This resistance can be substantiated by observing the extra roll of earth that precedes a loading bucket or lip so equipped or by checking fuel consumption or energy records.
In prior art the earth working tooth has functioned as an operating pushed wedge. Its first function is a scarifier, then part a cleaver and part uplifter.
A working tooth on a lip, means then that a portion of the excavation process is shared with the lip. With some of the excavation left scarified, there is insufficient resistance to load the excavation until sufficient surcharge or roll is ahead to force the excavation over the lip.
During forward movement, the lip must gather the loose scarified earth as a roll plus ribs of undisturbed earth left behind the teeth. The lip must now fracture and cleave with sufficient additional energy to uplift the new excavation with the loose roll.
This dual process of circulating and rehandling a sizable percentage of excavation can mean considerable loss of energy.
Much of the lip excavated earth must also be drawn up between the teeth. The greater the percentage of earth that is loaded between the teeth, the greater resistance or energy loss becomes.
As a wedge type tooth wears, it develops a blunt leading edge. The thickness of the slope determines the bluntness of the leading edge.
As a wedge type tooth is tilted to make it more aggressive, it will concentrate the wear atop the tooth, and it will further expose the attachment joints to abrasive earthen excavation.
My innovative, inclined plane earth engaging tool an accompanying clean up edge, attaches to an implement. This implement replaces the teeth, lip, and combination of accessories as presented in these examples of prior art. The implement is a structural member and ground engagement is left to a specialized inclined plane and a companion cutting edge system. Earth is engaged fractured, cleaved, and uplifted with a one piece one action earth engaging tool. This arrangement separates its abrasive work from its working structure and the implement. Working as several in unison, it can be arranged to bridge cleave. It is constructed and arranged with several times the sacrificial metal, much more efficiency, and several times the working life of prior art.
Accordingly several objects and advantages of my invention are:
a. to provide an improved earth engaging tool,
b. to provide an earth engaging tool system that is extremely aggressive and that engages and cleaves earth between tools and it makes a single earth engagement in fracturing and cleaving,
c. to provide an earth engaging tool that combats the most severe working conditions with superior performance and staying.
d. to provide an inclined plane earth working tool whose system allows individual units acting in unison to develop a bridged cleavage of nearly all oncoming earthen excavation,
e. to provide an inclined plane earth engaging tool that nearly totally isolates abrasive earthen excavation from structural components of the tool and the lip or implement,
f. to provide an inclined plane earth engaging tool that produces fractured and cleaved earthen excavation at a superior rate for at least the same cost or less,
g. to provide a strong inclined plane earth engaging tool that is robust, but is trim and simple and is still able to withstand harsh erosion,
h. to provide an inclined plane earth engaging tool whose upper rearward extremities act as a stabilizer that can add to its integrity and stability,
i. to provide an inclined plane earth engaging tool that has several times the sacrificial metal of prior art,
j. to provide an inclined plane earth engaging tool that is highly adaptable and has all of the above qualities built around one element.